


Penelophon

by Telperien



Category: Batman (Comics), Catwoman (Comics)
Genre: Batman #50, Character Study, Class Issues, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, F/M, Fix-It, Gratuitous Use of Hypertime, Identity Porn, Identity Reveal, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Non-Explicit Sex, Not Beta Read, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Post-Crisis (DCU), Relationship Study, Secret Identity, Selina Kyle is Carmine Falcone's Biological Daughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-05-31 23:35:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15130187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telperien/pseuds/Telperien
Summary: Catwoman is a creature of the night, teasing and taunting Batman until he gives in. Selina Kyle is an ex-con trying to go straight, sticking with Bruce Wayne until her meal ticket becomes her boyfriend.Then she finds out that Batman and Bruce Wayne are one in the same. Then heproposes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can't tell, this started out as, like, three separate stories that I stitched together after the Batman #50 spoilers this morning drove me into a rage-induced fit of productivity. I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out, which probably means that it's horrible, unreadable dreck.
> 
> Otherwise: (1) "Penelophon" is the name of the heroine from the story of King Cophetua, also known as "The King and the Beggar-maid," because I'm subtle like that, (2) Selina's backstory herein is mainly post-Crisis, and (3) this chapter includes scenes heavily cribbed from Batman (2016) #28 and references to the events of Batman #31.
> 
> If you have any questions, hit me up in the comments. Hopefully I'll have chapter two up soon.

Selina didn’t find out that Carmine Falcone was her biological father until she was nineteen years old. She'd heard rumors about her mom sleeping around, but she'd ignored all that. Thought those stories were nothing more than malicious gossip from old biddies with nothing else better to do than count their dead husbands and sons. It turned out she shouldn’t have, but whatever. It didn't _change_ anything. It wasn't like bastards were thin on the ground in the East End.

She wasn’t surprised. Holly was. “If Falcone is your dad,” the younger girl said as she methodologically ripped up a fast food wrapper, “shouldn’t he have, you know, looked out for you? Even a little? You were  _a child_ living on the _streets_. _Awful_ things happened to you. And he runs this town, so he must’ve known that you were on your own, if he were paying the slightest bit of attention to you.”

Selina laughed. “Why would he pay any attention to me?”

Holly’s problem was that her father _had_ paid attention to her. She couldn’t imagine the opposite problem. “You’re his kid, Selina. Rich assholes give their bastards money to keep them quiet, don’t they? He should have done the same for you.”

“Maybe if my mom was somebody, he would have,” Selina admitted. “But Maria Kyle was nobody. Rich men don’t care about poor women. We’re just here for a momentary thrill.”

Her friend snorted. “Ain’t that the truth.”

 

They spent a lot of time talking, her and Holly. There wasn't much else to do in between scores.

Mostly Holly talked. She talked about what she'd eaten that day, what the neighbors were arguing about now, the latest rumors from the Maronis, her brother Davey, what she thought of a song she'd heard earlier and the movie they'd snuck into yesterday, and girls.

 _Oh boy,_ did she talk about girls.

At first she'd talked about them in abstract, with a rabbity look, like she was simply complimenting them for achieving some level of femininity she aspired to, but after Selina agreed that, yes, Ji-min at Taco Whiz was very pretty, she talked more. She talked a lot, and Selina listened. Ji-min lost her favor, and Leah gained it. Fatimah reigned supreme for two weeks, but her lack of interest in punk music left Holly to swoon over Marianne instead. Then Marianne skipped town with a warrant out for her arrest and a Bressi soldato on her tail, and a succession of local girls took her place in Holly’s affections.

Selina understood. She’d gained twenty pounds when she’d escaped, then lost thirty, then gained back fifteen. She had wanted to prove that she could do it—that it was her choice to make and that no one was going to beat her for making choices anymore.

The choices she did make weren’t always stellar, but they were _hers_. And now Holly’s were Holly’s.

Most of their talking happened on the dirty, battered mattress that served as the only piece of furniture in Selina's dirty, leaky apartment. People with money had sound machines, right? To help them get to sleep? Well, Selina had Holly and her chatter. It was one way to pass the time.

They were trying to get to sleep (hard to, with three hundred thousand dollars' worth of jewels underneath them) when Holly interrupted her own monologue to whisper, "I'd let Leanne do _anything_ to me," like her confession surprised even her.

Selina hummed. “She’s nice.” She was. Nicer than Marianne.

“Yeah, she is.” Holly smiled sweetly to herself, and Selina didn’t regret anything in her damned, shitty life for all of three seconds. “What about you?” she asked, her eyes luminous with the reflected glow from Crime Alley’s one flickering street light. “Is there somebody you’d—you know—let ‘em do what they wanted? Even though you don’t have to anymore?”

Selina opened her mouth to snap, _no, of course not, no one’s touching me again,_ but then she remembered the firm grip of a gauntlet around her wrist and a flat, rough voice intoning, _“You’re better than this, Selina.”_ It was hardly the stuff of fairy tales, especially considering the dozen other encounters they’d had, but—

She liked the way he'd touched her. There hadn't been a bruise afterwards, though he was strong enough to mark her and then some. Which meant he'd chosen not to hurt her. She couldn't remember anyone else who'd made the same choice in her whole life.

She liked his voice too, the one time he’d turned off the vocal modulator, so deep and so soft, and she liked how tall and broad-shouldered he was. No amount of armor could fake _that._

He hadn’t answered her when she asked him if he were handsome under his armor and his cape. She pretended it was because the answer was yes. She pretended a lot of things. Not just about him, but when she _did_ imagine him…

"Batman," she whispered back. “He could do anything to me. I’d let him.”

 

The night he'd turned off his vocal modulator, Selina had crawled into bed beside a slumbering Holly and imagined Batman saying _"You're better than this, Selina,"_ in his real voice. She'd slipped her hand between her legs and nearly bit her bottom lip off trying to keep quiet, desperately hoping she didn't wake up her roommate.

She could never tell Holly about that, though. Not in a million years.

 

Batman didn't know about her shameful fantasies, and if she had her way, he'd never find out about them. Their relationship—or whatever it was—had suffered after Catwoman started working with the other supervillains in town. Only for small jobs, mind you. No killing, no permanent damage. It was convenient, okay? And she knew where the line was.

Batman kept trying to catch her alone, but Catwoman wasn’t willing to be caught. She ran every time she saw him. She had no interest in hearing his lectures.

The detente between the Bat and the Cat lasted until the Joker and the Riddler had their tiff _._ Selina gracefully withdrew from that nonsense as soon as Mr. Freeze alerted her to it, but no one was willing to accept her neutrality. The pair of them sent representatives to try and sway her to their side, but everyone except Poison Ivy, she punted out a window.

Literally, in Kite Man's case.

Batman caught Kite Man as he went crashing out the window of the Maroni safehouse, and Catwoman laughed. "I knew you were there!" she called down to him as the idiot burbled a "hell yeah."

She could _feel_ his frown. "I'm sure," he called back.

He climbed into the apartment, Kite Man left to his own devices, and Selina waited for him with a thumping heart. The Joker and the Riddler were at odds, they were tearing apart the whole city, causing countless deaths and injuries, and every costume in town had picked a side… except the two of them. The hero and the thief. She'd listen to his pitch, she decided. She'd hear what he had to say, and she'd decide.

Maybe she'd pick his side. She didn't want to see Gotham torn asunder by those two assholes. If Gotham were torn asunder, there’d be no jewels left for her to steal.

And her _home_ would be gone.

"Nice place you have here," he said sardonically.

"It's a Maroni hideout," Catwoman explained.

"So, not yours?"

Her mouth curled into a smile. "They stole something from me."

He didn't seem convinced. Good. She'd hate it if he were convinced by such an amateurish lie.

She knelt down by the safe. "Why haven't you picked a side?" he asked. He didn't try to stop her. Maybe he knew her victims deserved far worse than this, or maybe he just didn't care about thievery when there was a war going on outside these walls.

"I'm not like them. They're criminals."

"You're currently breaking into a safe that's not yours."

"You know what I mean," she said. The lock clicked, and Catwoman reached in to pull out the diamonds. "I'm not like them. They're _unsuccessful_ criminals."

His next question stopped her in her tracks: "Do I need to worry about you?"

She turned to face him, climbing unsteadily to her feet. He looked as implacable as ever, but he couldn't be. Two years she'd had to puzzle him out, and in that time she'd come to the unsettling conclusion that he  _loved_ this hellhole of a city. "Are you checking up on me, Batman?" she asked. "Are you trying to _protect_ me?"

He huffed. "No. No one needs to protect you."

"Oh." She took a step nearer him, and for once he didn't step backwards. He didn't grab her shoulders or say  _"Selina"_ in that disappointed way, the one that only needed to imply _you're better than this_. "Well then, yes, you _very_ much have to worry about me." She took another step closer to him. Her breath ghosted over his mouth, and still he didn't push her away.

He kissed her.

Selina wasn't proud of the sound she made right then. Desperate and needy and _girlish._

He pulled away. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"

"Don't apologize, I'm just… _surprised._ Are you sure?"

He leaned his forehead against hers. _"Please,"_ he muttered.

Alright. Selina could understand that. Nice man at the end of his rope, of course he wanted some creature comforts. And he knew her name, so of course he'd seen her police record with its dozen arrests for solicitation. He knew exactly what she was good for.

She kissed him.

It was dark in the apartment. Pitch black. Half the city lights were out, even in the middle-class part of town, and no one was willing to come out to fix them until they knew they wouldn't be shot for doing their jobs. They couldn't see each other at all. The only sounds they could hear were those of Batman's armor unlatching and hitting the floor, the slide of her suit down her body… _them._

It was rough and raw and _amazing_ , and afterwards, he kissed her like he'd die if he didn't. Selina giggled and ran her hand through his hair again. It was thick and soaked with sweat, and she thought she could spend hours carding her fingers through it, especially if he made _that sound_ every time and rested his head on her shoulder.

But they didn't have hours. Dawn was coming. "I should get going," he mumbled, and he pulled away from her with another kiss.

"Mm…"

He walked past his scattered armor, though, to the bathroom. He reached his hand out and flipped the switch, and for the brief second in between the light turning on and the door closing, Selina could see him outlined by the light. He had a good profile, she thought, the blood thrumming through her veins, with a strong chin, high cheekbones, and a long, straight nose. His hair was dark. _Definitely_ handsome.

The door shut behind him.

Selina knew what was going to happen next. He'd come out of the bathroom, and he'd show her his face and tell her his name. He'd kiss her again, he'd sway her to his side with well-reasoned arguments and more kisses, and then he'd regret it. This whole mess would end, he'd win ( _of course_ he would win), and he'd realize that he had made a huge mistake trusting Catwoman with his identity. He would play the devoted boyfriend for as long as he could, but how long could that last before he couldn't handle it anymore?

 _Then_ what would happen?

Selina yanked on her suit as quickly and quietly as she could. She grabbed the diamonds, then she was out the window.

 

Days later, Batman stood inside her apartment. Selina was only a little ashamed. It wasn't as nice as the Maroni safehouse, but it was nicer than it had been. Holly had come by with Leanne a few weeks ago and said it looked "almost habitable," which was high praise for any apartment in this part of the East End.

He didn't say anything about what had happened that night. "I have a plan to end this," he said, "but I need your help."

Catwoman stood with her arms akimbo, and she smirked. "Alright, hero," she said, "what's the plan?"

 

The Joker shot her, and Catwoman went crashing through a window herself. Selina was out of commission for whatever happened between Batman, the Joker, and the Riddler in their final showdown. She wouldn't find out what had happened for _years_.

She woke up in the free clinic with Dr. Thompkins standing over her, and she was as brisk and kind as ever when she told Selina what she'd missed: the war was over, the supervillains were all arrested, and Batman had brought Catwoman to the clinic personally.

That caught her attention. "He's okay?" she asked.

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "Physically, yes," Dr. Thompkins said. She somehow managed to look both disapproving and fond. "Sit back down, dear, you're in for a long recovery. You're lucky you survived, you know. From what Batman told me…" She tsked.

"I'm not under arrest?"

She smiled gently. "Do I look like a police officer to you?"

Dr. Thompkins kept her in a secluded room towards the back of the clinic. When she mentioned payment or the other patients who surely needed the space (and she knew there were always too many patients and not enough money, she'd been one of them, once), Dr. Thompkins only clicked her tongue and said, "Everything's covered, Selina. Don't worry about a thing."

"Is _Batman_ paying for this?" she demanded.

"I'm not going to answer that," she said, which was a _yes_ if Selina had ever heard one.

Her release couldn't come soon enough. She was tempted to go after the biggest score she could—Wayne Manor, she figured, or maybe the Darracourts—to catch his attention, but she couldn't afford to risk it when she was injured and out of shape.

Anyway, she didn't need it. He came to her.

Again, he appeared inside her apartment, standing there like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Hey, big spender," she said dryly. "I suppose I should thank you for covering medical. Never had a job that good before."

He frowned. "Dr. Thompkins wasn't supposed to tell you."

"She didn't need to. I'm not _stupid._ "

His head lifted. "I never meant to imply that you were," he said gently. He'd turned off the vocal modulator. "It was my fault you were injured, Selina. I never meant for you to be in danger. The least I could do was pay for the consequences of my decisions."

Selina crossed her arms. "It's a lot of money," she said quietly.

He shrugged.

It made sense that Batman had money. All that gear had to cost a lot (Lord knew hers did, and Catwoman was a lot less high-tech), and she'd heard that he paid his informants well. It was nice of him and all, but… Selina wasn't comfortable with him spending money on _her,_ especially after what had happened that night.

Suddenly the ghost of Maria Kyle possessed her, and she remembered her manners. "Do you—D'you want something to drink?" she asked awkwardly. "Or eat? There's not a lot… I've been in the clinic for a while, so it's really…"

"I'm fine, thank you, Selina."

"Right."

She blinked, and he was gone.

 

He was back a few days later, and again he stood in the middle of her studio apartment like the world's most uncomfortable statue. She took pity on him. This time she kissed him first, and he met each kiss with a flattering desperation. She grew hotter and more frenzied by the second. She wanted to touch him again, _really_ touch him, to card her fingers through his hair and trail the scars down his back and sides.

"My mask—" he groaned in between kisses.

He didn't trust her, she _knew_ that, but it still hurt to have it confirmed. It hurt the same way hearing him say, _"You’re better than this,"_ had hurt her and was still hurting her and maybe would always hurt her.

Selina thought fast.

Holly had left behind a sleep mask. It was a cheap thing she'd gotten for four dollars at Lexmart, but it'd do the trick. Batman stood there silently when Selina went to dig it out, and he stood there silently after Selina handed it to him. She shifted from foot to foot, her heart beating faster, as Batman just _stood there_ with the sleep mask in one gloved hand. She thought he'd toss it aside or laugh in her face, but he said, “I know who you are.”

She swallowed down her anxiety. “You’re in my apartment.”

“It’s imbalanced,” he explained, but he didn’t sound fully convinced himself. “ _Unequal._ Any relationship in which one person holds all the power—”

Selina cut him off, offended. “Let's get one thing straight, _dark knight_ —You don’t hold all the power. You don't hold any power here beyond what I’m giving you. What I'm _lending_ you. This is _my_ idea, okay? If you don’t like it, fine. There’s the window. You can leave the same way you came. But if you _do…_ ”

He handed her back the mask, and Selina pulled it down over her head. She stood in the middle of her apartment, listening to Batman strip off his armor piece by piece. It was surprisingly intense. Shockingly erotic. She _squirmed_ at the sounds of fabric brushing against his skin and armor hitting the floor, and Selina wasn't one to squirm.

He changed her mind about that when he slid her pajama top over her head. His fingers were firm and gentle as he unwrapped her body, so _steady_ she thought her heart might break from it.

Selina raised herself up onto her tiptoes, ignoring the stretch of her gunshot wound, and wrapped her arms around his neck. He smelled like sweat and metal, and he was _big._ Tall and muscular, with raised and puckered scars across his chest and back. He was _warm_. “Talk to me,” she murmured to his clavicle, “I like your voice.”

Batman didn’t speak again for a second, then two, then a minute, and Selina cursed herself for her stupidity. She shouldn’t have said anything at all. Then Batman said, “I don’t know what to say.”

She was smiling. She probably looked like a loon, smiling like that with a sleep mask on. “You’re not a talker?” she teased.

His shoulders shook. “Have I ever been?” He sounded amused.

“Well, no, but…” _I wondered if it were all part of your disguise._ “What kind of movies do you like? Or, uh, TV shows?”

“I don’t have time for that sort of thing,” he said. Selina lifted a hand to touch his lips, and he wrapped his fingers around hers and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

She blushed. She had never taken Batman for a _romantic._

“You _never_ watch TV?”

“Sometimes. When I’m injured.”

Selina didn’t like to think of Batman injured, though she knew he could be. When she pressed her chest against his, she could feel the four gashes she had scored across his heart during their first meeting. “Uh-huh. And what do you watch when you’re injured and at absolutely no other time whatsoever?”

“I have a box set of _The Grey Ghost_ ,” he admitted. “My mother and I used to watch reruns together. So when I’m injured, or when I’m sick… it’s a good show. It's aged surprisingly well.”

It wasn’t an identifying detail, not like his name or his face, but it was personal. Shockingly so. “That’s the sort of thing you like?” Selina asked, her throat dry. She could have asked him about his mother, but she didn’t. That would be too much. He’d definitely shut down if she asked about his family.

“Hm. Whodunits and swashbucklers.” Now he kissed her palm. He still didn’t release her hand. “I’m very boring, Selina. Don’t let the cape fool you.”

“If you were boring, I wouldn’t be here.”

“No, you wouldn’t be. You’re not boring.”

“I can be boring,” Selina protested. She could watch old TV shows and like them. She could spend a quiet evening at home while he recovered from his latest misadventure. Never mind that she didn't know where his home _was_.

Batman chuckled. “You could talk about _tax law_ for fifteen hours, and I wouldn’t be bored.”

“Is tax law boring?”

“Have you never paid taxes?”

Selina hoped he couldn’t read her expression from underneath the blindfold. “I don’t know how.” She was pretty sure her parents had never paid taxes. Or maybe they had. Brian and Maria had never told their preteen daughter about the exact nature of their money problems. She only knew that they had money problems in the first place because they had argued constantly.

“That’s… You need to pay taxes, Selina. Tax evasion is how they took down Al Capone.”

She kissed his neck. “You said you’d talk to me,” she complained. “Come on, tell me about… _hm_ … the stupidest supervillain you’ve ever faced.”

“Killer Moth.”

_“And?”_

“He’s an idiot.”

“You can’t tell, but I’m rolling my eyes right now.”

His mouth was warm and sweet against hers.

 

Selina had no idea if it were morning yet or not when she woke up. All she knew was that Batman’s bare fingers were grazing the edge of her mask.

Selina grabbed him by the wrist. “What was true _before_ is true _now_ ,” she said sharply, and he withdrew his hand. He didn’t say anything, not even a goodbye. He pulled on his armor, each buckle and snap ringing through her apartment like a bell, and she didn’t say anything either.

She waited until she heard him climb out the window to pull off the mask.

The room was as dark and empty as it had been before he came. There was a batarang on her bedside table. She wondered if it were meant as payment or a souvenir.

 

Selina invested in a better mask, a proper blindfold from a sex shop around the corner. It was fifty dollars down the drain, but she thought _(hoped)_ that she’d get a return on her investment.

And she did.

 

Sometimes he tried to talk to her about _real_ things, and that was when she figured out he was single. Only a single man, a _lonely_ man, would look at his blindfolded casual sex partner and think to say, “Robin’s struggling at school.”

It was a shocking statement. Not because it was personal. Batman was remarkably careless about personal details with her. It was shocking because Selina barely knew Robin. The sidekick had only been around for a few months, since the summer, and Daddy didn’t let baby bird play with the cat. Maybe he was afraid she’d spill the beans and tell him where his old man spent his pre-dawn mornings. Maybe he was afraid Robin would spill the beans and tell her who they were under their masks.

“Don’t look to me for advice,” she said, airily unconcerned, “I dropped out at twelve.”

“Hrm. Have you considered going back to school?”

She laughed. “Why on Earth would I want to do that?”

He started going on about how education could change lives, or whatever, so Selina cut him off with a kiss and curled up in his lap, rubbing herself against his spent cock. He sighed and ran his hands through her hair as he met her kiss for kiss.

She did wonder—a little—what kind of trouble Robin could be getting into. He seemed like a good kid. Angry and violent, maybe, but that was how you knew him for a _Gothamite_. Catwoman and Batman were no less angry. No less violent.

She wondered if there were other kids waiting for Dad to wrap up the pillow talk and come home. Batman might be single, but that didn’t mean Robin lacked siblings. There could be a dozen of them hidden away in whatever cave Batman called home.

Selina kissed him harder and refused to think about it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, slamming my fist on my desk: Catwoman's 1954-1966 stay in comic book limbo was because she got arrested! She took a Suicide Squad-type deal to get out of jail-time! Obviously, since no one knows she's Catwoman after that (okay, and after two or three reality-altering events), her identity was never proven in a court of law!
> 
> This chapter references the following comics: Batman (1940) #308, #313, #314, #315, #317, #319, #323, #324, and #326.
> 
> Rachel Green is (seriously) Bruce's lawyer from the early 2000s. She defended him in Murderer/Fugitive, and he sent her to defend Renee Montoya in Gotham Central: Half a Life. Either Ed Brubaker watched "Friends," or he really, really didn't.
> 
> Once again, hit me up in the comments if you have any questions or if you just want to scream about Batman #50. Because I could go for a scream right now.

Catwoman's arrest broke the Gotham newspapers. _Naturally_. She was the last of the Rogues to be captured, years after her debut, the police had arrested her without any assistance from Batman, she was young and beautiful with a _deliciously_ lurid history, and she maintained a stony silence through the whole trial even as her own lawyer begged her to say something,  _anything_ in her defense. It was the stuff tabloids dreamed of, and they ran with it— _the glamorous thief,_ the articles read, _the green-eyed former prostitute._

“Sex worker,” Selina insisted.

" _Child_ ," Rachel Green argued, her dark eyes pitying. “Trafficking victim.”

They never did send the correction in to the papers.

Selina didn’t know what to think of Ms. Green anymore than she knew what to think of Selina. They hadn’t chosen each other. _Bruce Wayne,_ of all people, had sent his lawyer to defend Selina Kyle from federal prosecution, and when Selina asked why, Ms. Green said, “Mr. Wayne is a passionate believer in justice, Ms. Kyle. He pays me to defend many people who would otherwise have to rely on a public defender.”

“He’s a lech,” she retorted.

Ms. Green couldn't argue with that. Even a half-schooled whore like Selina could guess what Bruce Wayne got up to with the models and actresses he squired around town. Even a prig like Rachel Green knew what men like Bruce Wayne wanted from women like Selina Kyle.

Selina figured she owed it to him. He’d already paid more for her than all her past clients combined.

Ms. Green was a good lawyer, too, a thousand times better than anyone Selina could have hired. She convinced the court that the evidence linking Selina to Catwoman was purely circumstantial, and she convinced Selina to take the deal from ARGUS.

"It's ugly, and it might be unconstitutional," she said after reading the contract through, "but I think this is your best option. I like to think I've gotten to know you rather well, Ms. Kyle, over the course of this trial. You'd escape if you were imprisoned in a traditional manner, wouldn't you? You escaped from Sprang Hall. This gives you an alternative. It gives you a chance to do some good."

Selina signed on the dotted line just to shut her up.

 

Selina's arrest was as good as a breakup, not that they were _dating._ Batman never visited her, even though he easily could, and she never contacted him, not even when the option was put on the table by her handlers, who wanted an in with the Bat—and wanted one so badly they were willing to play matchmaker.

Selina didn’t think of Batman that often while she was paying her debt to society, believe it or not. She had other problems keeping her up at night, and he did too. She knew that. ARGUS couldn’t keep her from the news _and_ put her out into the field, so Catwoman had heard all about the Justice League and Batman’s recent forays into world-saving.

They ran into each other a couple times, but it was all strictly professional. Neither of them said anything about their past assignations. And it was no wonder, she thought, with the likes of Wonder Woman and Batgirl around. He didn’t need to look to jewel thieves for companionship anymore, he had _heroines_ for that.

 _They’d_ seen his face. She knew that instinctively.

 

Holly picked her up from the airport after her release. "You're staying with us," she declared in greeting. When Selina protested, she cut her off. "Don't be ridiculous. How long have we known each other, Selina? How long did you look after me? I need to pick up the slack, and _you_ need to adjust to life after prison."

Selina couldn't think of a counterargument to that. "It wasn't exactly a _traditional_ prison experience," she tried.

Holly rolled her eyes. "Oh _God,_ you're _impossible._ You know what, _whatever._ Tell yourself it's just for a few weeks, tell yourself it's because your old apartment got totaled by Quakemaster (which happened, by the way, I handled the super), tell yourself whatever you need to, _you're staying with us_. It's past time for you to meet Karon, anyway."

Selina really couldn't argue with that.

Karon turned out to be a nice young woman with an excellent grasp of timing. Within minutes, she had figured out that Selina wanted to be alone and Holly wanted to fuss, so she'd excused herself and gone to Killinger for drapes that the guestroom suddenly needed and desperately so. And she had to get there before closing, so _goodbye_.

Selina seized the opportunity. She told Holly she wanted to unpack, and Holly nodded and said, "I'll be right here if you need anything, alright?" like Selina was an overanxious toddler trying out the big girl slide for the first time.

"I _know,_ Holly," she said, and she walked into the guest bedroom without thinking to double-check that the room was secure. It was a careless and amateurish mistake, and she deserved a lot worse than a jolt of adrenaline and a dropped suitcase.

Her gasp brought Holly running. "Are you alright?" she called out, slamming open the door so quickly she almost hit Selina. She stopped dead when she saw Batman standing there, staring that same implacable stare he'd always had. "What are _you_ doing here?" she snapped. Gone was the scared girl from the Narrows. "She hasn't done anything wrong! You can't cart her off for _existing._ "

"That's not why I'm here," he said, his voice mechanical, the white lenses of his eyes focused on Selina.

"Then why _are_ you here?" Holly demanded.

He stared at Selina, and Selina stared back. "Why are you here?" she repeated. She remembered every single encounter from the last few years, each and every time she'd run into the Dark Knight and his Justice League friends. He'd been cool and professional when she was ARGUS property, but now that she was out, he wanted to play cops and robbers again?

Selina didn't do that anymore.

"No reason," he said, so softly it almost sounded like his _real_ voice, the one she could only remember if she screwed her eyes shut and tried, and he disappeared out the window the way he always had.

When he was gone, Holly pointed to the open window and sneered, _"Asshole,"_ in the most vicious tone she could muster. "Where does he get off? What was he going to say to you, huh? If I hadn't come in, I bet he would've—" she mimicked his voice "— _keep your nose clean, stay out of trouble._ Ugh! Asshole!"

"We used to sleep together."

Holly reeled on her. _"What?"_

Selina hadn't meant to say anything. "Back before I was arrested," she explained. She couldn't look Holly in the eye. "We used to sleep together. He'd come to my old apartment whenever he was, uh, _in the mood_ , and we'd have sex. Good sex," Selina added, like it justified anything of what she had just said.

Holly's mouth was wide open. "You know _his identity?"_

"Uh, no. I don't."

Holly exhaled a soft _oh_ and wrapped her arms around Selina. She smelled like vanilla, nothing like the reek of Crime Alley that used to cling to them both. "He's an ass," she said. "You deserve better, you _know_ that, right? You're the best person in the world, and you deserve someone who treats you like like a fairy tale princess. Or like Karon treats me."

Selina hugged her back.

 

She lasted a week before she couldn't stand relying on Holly's charity and Karon's tolerance anymore. Unfortunately, that left her with few options. There was money, hidden away in an offshore account under an alias, but it wasn't enough to last forever. And she only knew one way to get more.

Well, two.

On the afternoon Selina committed to being a monster, she put on a red dress, a yellow jacket, and a sunhat large enough to knock out passersby. She was bright and colorful and eye-catching, and the second she had walked by, everyone would forget her face and everything about her except her outrageous fashion sense. She was counting on that. It was the cornerstone of her plans for the day.

"You look nice," Karon said when Selina emerged from her room.

Holly perked up. "Are you going to see Maggie?" she asked. She kept banging on about that.

"No, I'm going to Wayne Tower."

Their shock followed her out into the hall.

It was a thirty minute trip from the Bowery to the Diamond District, the subway just as crowded and unpleasant as she remembered it, and no one thought to stop Selina until she had reached the seventieth floor of Wayne Tower. That was when the mousy woman sitting in front of his office said, "Mr. Wayne asked not be disturbed," and looked at her phone like she couldn't believe it hadn't rung when security called her, which _obviously_ they must have.

If Selina had the time, she'd explain the facts of life to this poor girl. "He'll want to see me," she said, and her hand was twisting the doorknob open before the woman could say another word of protest.

Wayne didn't look up from his paperwork. "This had better be important, Gwen," he mumbled around the pen in his mouth. His hair was mussed, and he looked nothing like the useless playboy from the _Gazette_.

"I'm not Gwen," Selina said. The door shut behind her.

Wayne made a choking sound and spat out his pen, managing to catch it the second before it escaped his reach. Selina was duly impressed, but she was the only one. Wayne eyed her with something like horror. "Catwoman!" he croaked. "I, uh…"

Selina smiled brilliantly. "Selina, please. Thanks to your lawyer, the prosecutor had to concede that it's impossible to prove Selina Kyle and Catwoman are the same person."

He smoothed down his hair. "Is that why you're here, Ms. Kyle? You could have sent a card. I think my security team would have preferred it, in fact, especially after their supervisor is done screaming at them."

"You don't do your own screaming?"

"I pay people to scream for me," he said, his mouth twitching into something like a smile, "but that's neither here nor there."

Selina glanced at one of the office chairs. "May I sit?" she asked, and at Wayne's nod, she slid into the chair with all the elegance and grace she had used to swindle Conte Digatti out of his family's prized rubies. She brushed an imaginary piece of lint off her shoulder to draw attention to her breasts, and Wayne obliged her by crossing his legs and clearing his throat. "You have a lovely office, Mr. Wayne." It _was_ nice. Surprisingly tasteful. She'd expected more gilt.

"I doubt you came all this way to admire my office decor."

"You're right. I came to discuss business." Wayne raised an eyebrow. "I have some money I'd like to invest—the remains of an old inheritance—and I thought that you might be in a position to help me. After you paid my legal bills, I thought… I  _hoped_ …" She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave him the full force of her green gaze. "Well, everyone knows that _Bruce Wayne_ knows how to make a billion out of a buck in this town," she concluded, admiration dripping from every word.

Any other man would be eating out of the palm of her hand after that performance, but not Wayne. "An old inheritance," he repeated. He was _definitely_ smiling now. "I'm not in the habit of laundering money, Ms. Kyle… but of course, ARGUS investigated all your accounts. Anyone who looked into it themselves would see that the money is clean."

Selina swallowed. He was _supposed_ to be stupid. "Yes, Mr. Wayne. Of course."

"How convenient." He tapped his pen on the stack of papers waiting for his signature. "I would love to help you, Ms. Kyle, but unfortunately I have to finish this before the day's out. Perhaps we could discuss your prospects some other time. Over dinner, perhaps?"

Her panic eased. Everything was fine, everything was going as she had expected, and now it was time for the _coup de grâce._

"It's a date," she purred.

"Yes. It is."

His grin was brilliant too and—so much the better— _sincere._

 

His secretary called Selina. She had no idea if that were the normal way billionaires asked women out on dates, so she decided to play it cool when she met up with him. Classy instead of sexy and, most importantly, _discreet_. Coming on too strong could drive him off, and drawing too much attention _definitely_ would. She needed the Wayne legitimacy too much right now to be careless.

Tragically Bruce didn't care how much effort she had put into her look. He chuckled when he saw her, which was _not_ the effect she was going for. "It's after dark, Selina. Are you auditioning for a spy film?" he asked, and he pulled the hat off her head, fussing with the strands he had loosened from her up-do like a hairdresser. Or a perfectionist.

Selina took her sunglasses off. "I was wearing it for _your_ sake," she said, a little peevishly. "I didn't think it'd help your reputation to be seen in public with an ex-con."

"That's a bit silly, isn't it? Considering I'm taking _this_ ex-con to dinner at one of Gotham's poshest restaurants."

"You are? But—"

Bruce raised an eyebrow, so Selina abandoned the subject. The paparazzi and the flashing lights from their cameras made her point for her. If that failed, then the subsequent articles reiterating her past must have done the trick.

Except none of that did. Bruce continued to invite her out to public places and public events, she continued accepting (at first because it helped her, then because she _liked_ him), and the tabloids published the same story every time about Prince Charming slumming it with a jailbird Cinderella.

Eventually it fell to Selina to do something. Bruce's butler kept _looking_ at her whenever she went to his place, and the one time she crossed paths with his ward, Dick had called her "a siren of the night" like it was an inside joke between the two of them.

"Did you see the article in the _Guardian?_ " she asked in a carefully indifferent tone, her attention entirely focused on the diamond bracelet he'd given her tonight—for no better reason than it suited her dress—as his driver took them back to her apartment. _  
_

"Hm. Was it… untrue?"

"No." It had been devastatingly true. "I just wondered if you'd seen it."

Bruce nodded gravely. "I did."

That was the end of it. She'd brought it up, Bruce had dismissed it, end of story.

Except the next time Selina crossed paths with Dick, in the foyer of Wayne Manor, he said, "I'm sorry Bruce is taking so long. He's got some vendetta against the owner of the _Guardian,_ and they're duking it out over Mammoths boxes. Do you like baseball, or is he going to drag _me_ to another game?"

"Maybe he'll take Alfred," she said like she was a member of the family, someone who joked with them about Bruce's fixation with the American pastime, and the butler said, "Heaven forbid."

 

Selina had spent years on the periphery of the rich and famous, sneaking into their homes and their parties and sneaking out with their jewels, but dating _the_ Bruce Wayne was something else entirely. Bruce was the center of every "let them eat cake" event they went to, everyone wanted a piece of him, and when she was on his arm Selina drew just as many eyes. Just as many camera flashes.

That was why it took her so long to figure out what was really going on.

The sound of her stalker's head hitting the brick wall made Selina wince, but she grit her teeth and reminded herself that he deserved it. He'd been following her all over the East End for a week. Today, he had trailed her from Sunshine Smoothies to Wildcat's Gym to the bodega on Wein Street, and she'd had _enough._

He deserved the dizzying tour of the Narrows she'd given him. He deserved the head wound.

"Why are you following me?" she demanded, pressing the heel of her boot into his stomach. He choked and stuttered, looking up at her with a bloody mouth and pleading eyes, and she didn't know why he thought she'd care. This was the _East End._ You were either the predator or the prey, and anyone who didn't understand that had no business stepping off McKinley Station with its broken security cameras, abandoned help desk, and graffiti-covered walls.

McKinley Station was there as a _warning._

"H-hired."

She bared her teeth and twisted her heel. He yelped. "For what kind of job?"

"P-p- _private_ eye."

Her color rose. "Who hired you?"

"W-Wayne Enterprises," the man choked out.

Selina lifted her foot. She had no idea what to do with that information. What to  _think._ She stared at her stalker— _the private investigator,_ who _Bruce_ had hired to _follow her_ —for what felt like an eternity but was probably only five seconds. Then she ran into the shadows.

Hours passed in a daze. Then her phone started ringing. It didn't stop until the battery died.

Selina didn't know what time it was when she made her way back to her apartment, but it was dark and Bruce was asleep in his car in front of her building. She smacked the hood and set off the alarm as she passed by, and he jolted awake.

"I swear it wasn't me," he said instead of _hello._ "I didn't know about it until today. It was the board, they decided—I would _never_ —"

Selina sighed. "Come upstairs, Bruce. It's cold out."

It was amazing how a man so tall and broad, so _masculine,_ could look so much like a little boy. "Are you angry?" he asked, his eyes wide and oh-so blue.

_Yes, I'm furious._

_No, it's my fault for expecting differently.  
_

"Let's go to bed," she said.

 

Lunch with Maggie was always an experience. Selina and her sister couldn't go five minutes without stepping on each other's trauma or insulting the other's lifestyle. Normal people would have given up by now, but not the Kyles. They were too Catholic to abandon a failed system.

Strangely enough, the one aspect of Selina's life that Maggie could admire was Bruce. Gotham's Prince had donated a fortune to the Immaculate Virgin Mission over the years, so Maggie had put it into her head that Bruce Wayne was a good influence on her troubled sister. She always asked about him when their conversation faltered. "How are things with Bruce?" she'd ask, and Selina would answer, "Good. Bruce is great."

Maggie would faint if Selina ever answered the question honestly.

Not because she had anything _bad_ to say about her boyfriend, but because of the details she could share. _Personal_ details, the kind you didn't go around sharing with nuns outside of some _very_ specialized pornos.

Not that he was _kinky_ either. Selina didn't know how to describe it.

A lot of people had preferred positions, she _knew_ that, but Bruce was bizarrely (and unobtrusively) militant about how they had sex. It went far beyond a mere preference. Every time, it was one of two ways. Either they were fully clothed, or Bruce took her from behind. It didn't bother her, but she'd noticed. And kept noticing. She was halfway to thinking the problem was _her_ , but then she'd gotten a hand up his shirt.

He'd pulled away a split second later, but it was too late. She'd felt the scarring on his chest and hip.

Selina used to have clients who were deformed or disabled, men who couldn't have sex except with a professional. She understood that sort of situation, however strange it was to compare the poor and the criminal of Gotham to a Wayne. What she couldn't get was how it had happened to _Bruce._ Either he had undergone an accident so horrifying it would have been headline news (and she'd checked, there was nothing like that), or it was the work of _years._

The latter had to be true. The latter boggled her mind.

Selina toyed with all the options before deciding the scars had to be the result of bedroom exploits past, but when she'd tried bringing it up, he'd shut her down with a mild "I enjoy what we're doing now, Selina." Which was nice, and all, but—

He never said a word about _her_ scars. Something was going on. Selina didn't know what, but it was _something._

"Has he taken you anywhere fun?" Maggie pressed after Selina's typically vague answer.

"Haven't you been reading the papers?"

Maggie grinned. "You tell it better. I can't believe your costume party was crashed by Gentleman Ghost! I'd never even heard of him until I saw that article in the _Gazette_. He isn't one of the usual Gotham freaks, is he?"

She might as well asked, "Was he one of your coworkers, Selina?"

"Some Midway pest," Selina said dismissively. "Batman handled him."

Maggie shook her head. "Bruce must have been devastated. His parties always look so elegant in the papers, nothing like the spectacle the Vreelands put on. I can't believe some second-rate villain ruined his night."

Bruce hadn't been there. He'd cut and run minutes into the party. Alfred had caught his eye, and then—all of the sudden—he had urgent business to handle, leaving Selina to the tender mercies of his guests with no more than a kiss and a _"sorry, honey, it's important"_ to excuse him.

"It was very elegant," Selina agreed.

"And you were so beautiful! Catherine of Aragon, right? And Bruce was Henry the Eighth?" Maggie smiled at Selina's nod. "I must admit, I'm a little surprised you didn't go as Anne Boleyn."

Selina snorted. "I only sleep with married men when they pay me."

Maggie gaped at her.

Selina was on a streak when it came to ruining lunch. Maggie had done it three times to her six. "I'm sorry, that was out of line," she said, and she placed her hand on Maggie's smaller, softer one.

"I didn't mean it that way," Maggie said quietly. "I meant… Anne Boleyn was a religious reformer and a philanthropist who gave generously to the poor and supported education, she was famously and ruthlessly intelligent, and she was a trendsetter even before she caught Henry's eye. I'm probably a bad nun for saying that, but it's all true."

Selina looked away. "Well, Catherine of Aragon was Spanish. We have to support the side."

"Selina! Do you know _anything_ about the Spanish colonization of Cuba?"

They bickered playfully for a while, both of them dancing around the real reason Selina knew nothing about history, until Selina paused to take a sip of water and Maggie asked, monstrously thoughtful the way her sister could be, "Was it _strange_ to see Batman again?"

Holly hadn't told Maggie what Selina had told her. She only knew Batman as her sister's enemy. "In a way," Selina answered cautiously.

In another way, seeing Batman again had been the best thing to happen all evening. For a brief and glorious second, Selina had remembered what it was like to be a part of the action, a part of the _night,_ and she'd forgotten how miserable she was without Bruce there. Only Lucius Fox and his wife, out of all the guests in Wayne Manor, had spared her a sliver of kindness, and she knew it was because they pitied her. The other guests hadn't been as kind.

They couldn't have treated Bruce's past girlfriends with that same mixture of suspicion and disdain. There was no way. The men wouldn't smirk and brush their hands against any other woman who had "property of Bruce Wayne" all but tattooed on her forehead, and the women would never ask one of their own _where_ had she gotten her beautiful necklace and were those _real_ diamonds?

Selina couldn't help but think, _This never would have happened before. Not to Catwoman._

Considering everything else, she'd been happy to see Batman. _Ecstatic_ , really, even though he'd refused to look at her. So much so that when Bruce finally reappeared, she'd given him five minutes to play host with his neglected guests before dragging him into his study.

Selina had ripped open his breeches and ridden him— _Bruce_ , her  _boyfriend,_ her sweet and _normal_ boyfriend—like it was 1509. Her French hood had fallen off after one good thrust. Bruce had laughed and said, "Shoddy craftsmanship," swatting it into some unseen corner, but Selina couldn't join in the amusement. She'd grunted and writhed, she'd clawed at his shoulders, she'd collapsed on top of him like a marionette with its strings cut.

Bruce had pulled her up against his side. "Missed me?" he'd asked.

 _I miss Catwoman, I miss **freedom** ,_ she'd thought, and she'd _said_ , "Never leave me alone with those people again."

But Selina didn't think she would be escaping the Gotham upper-crust any time soon. Bruce hadn't made any indication that he was tiring of her, and she was too selfish to give him up first. "Mr. Fox apologized for having me followed," she told her sister as she held up her hand for the check. The waitress was eying Selina like she knew her from somewhere.

"As well he should. Bruce must have been _furious_."

Selina shrugged.

"He wasn't?"

Again she shrugged. "We didn't talk about it. He said he was sorry and that he hadn't known, but that was it."

"He probably didn't want to stir things up between you and his business partners," Maggie said, but she was discontented with Bruce Wayne for the first time since Selina started dating him.

 

There was a police car waiting outside Selina's apartment building when she got home. "Ms. Kyle?" an officer called out. She refused to run. She was a normal, every day citizen who had no reason to run. "We'd like a minute to speak with you."

She crossed her arms. "You have a minute exactly."

The cop smiled smugly. " _Right…_ Now, about last night, Ms. Kyle…"

It was the stupidest thing. Someone had robbed a cat-themed exhibit from the Riverside Museum, so the geniuses at the GCPD had sent two detectives in a squad car to investigate the chief Catwoman suspect. They probably would have sent a dozen if said suspect weren't plastered all over the tabloids, arm-and-arm with Bruce Wayne. Even Gotham cops knew it would be a bad idea to piss off the city's own Daddy Warbucks.

Selina was tempted to remind the dutiful boys in blue that Catwoman had never been a _themed_ criminal. She stole anything if the resale value made it worthwhile, and Egyptian urns weren't as highly in demand as some might think. But she wasn't stupid enough to exonerate herself from one crime by incriminating herself for another. She listened with half an ear as the detective triumphantly told her how a figure just around her height and wearing a cat-eared cowl was spotted leaving the museum by a guard and how the lack of physical evidence beyond several perfectly-cut incisions made the case similar to the former Catwoman's crime scenes.

"I was with my boyfriend last night," Selina said when he was done.

"At three in the morning?"

Bruce always left her apartment around midnight. He had a kid. "By then I was asleep."

"I took you for a night person."

Selina grit her teeth. "You'd be wrong."

"There's talk the urns carried magical herbs capable of healing diseases. Some scientists are willing to pay a lot of money to test that."

If he were trying to shock her, he'd have to try harder. Magic herbs weren't so unlikely in a world with Zatanna and Etrigan. "If so, I hope the urns are recovered," Selina said firmly, and she tried to move past him.

"The doctors said the herbs might even cure _addictions._ Like alcohol, or heroin." _Like your dad and your best friend._ This cop had obviously been watching too many police procedurals on TV. Or else he'd know it was never that clear-cut.

She rolled her eyes. "I hope the urns are recovered. _Excuse me_ , but your minute is over."

Selina got into her car and drove. She had no idea where she was going except _away_ until she found herself outside Wayne Manor. Then she thought about it, she built up her courage, and she decided to see if the movies were true.

Selina had never been one to _act out_ , not unless the part called for it, but she threw herself into Bruce's arms the second he opened the door. "You wouldn't believe what just happened," she said. She told the entire story to his neck, refusing to let go.

Bruce stroked her hair. "I'm sorry," he said in that soft voice that made her melt.

"I don't suppose you can call the commissioner and make him send his officers to finishing school."

He made a quiet sound of amusement. "I don't think Commissioner Gordon would take that call. I'm sorry. I wish I _could_ do something, but all you can do is cooperate with the police. If you're innocent, the police won't find any evidence connecting you to the crime."

Selina pulled away from him and stared her boyfriend dead in the eye, green to blue. "What do you mean _if_?" she asked quietly.

His eyes widened. "I meant—"

She took another step backwards. "You think I did it!"

Bruce shook his head. He looked frantic, and _good_. He should be frantic. He should be horrified and disgusted because Selina felt _exactly_ the same way. "No! I don't! But with the evidence such as it is, you can understand why they'd—"

There was no way for Bruce to know about the evidence. Not unless _they'd called him first._

Selina slapped him. "Some boyfriend you've been," she snapped. She ran out the front door and down the front steps as Bruce called her name. Then she was in her car, and she was driving, and she was getting _away_ from him too.

"Fuck!" she shouted, and she slammed her fist on the steering wheel.

 _Months_ they'd been dating, _months_ she'd put up with his disappearances and his high-society friends, _months_ she'd spent making sure every cent she owned was legitimate… Did he think all this time that she was an Egyptian urn away from a crime spree?

_Well, fuck you too, asshole._

 

Selina didn't waste much time wallowing over a carton of ice cream, and she only ate the ice cream in the first place because Holly insisted it was tradition. Her mind was absorbed in something much more fascinating than her first proper breakup, not that she could explain what that was to her friend.

She was so absorbed in her planning that it took her a while to realize she'd broken up with him. _Selina Kyle_ had broken up with _Bruce Wayne._ Her mother would've fainted if she'd ever heard that one.

Maria wouldn't _understand._ None of them did, not even Holly. They didn't know what the job was like.

Selina hadn't understood it herself until now.

It had been Stark who had told her truth all those years ago. "Once you do what you have to do, they never let you do what you want to do," he'd said in the voice of a philosopher. He liked to talk like that, the wise old man to her young grasshopper. She'd ignored everything he said that wasn't about grifting, but that one had stuck for some reason.

Maybe she'd known even then it was true. Which was fine. If Selina had to be a thief, then she was going to be the best there'd ever been.

By the end of the month, the Falcones were out twenty-four million dollars.

The money didn't stay in her keeping for long. It found its way, in bits and pieces, to the dozens of children's charities that served the East End. Selina was the best thief there was, and she was only going to get better, but her selfishness had taken a hit at some point. Maybe it was just because she was older, or maybe it was because she wasn't afraid of starving in the streets anymore—but other people could use the money more than she could.

Selina wasn't hurting for money these days. Bruce was a much better businessman than he had been a boyfriend.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might've noticed that this story now has four chapters instead of three. I split the last chapter into two instead of trimming it down like I did to the second chapter. That was not a successful experiment, and I've added back most of what I cut.
> 
> No direct references in this chapter, but there are elements from Brave and the Bold (1955) #176 and Ed Brubaker's Catwoman run. And Selina refers to the events of Batman (1940) #1 in which Selina steals Martha Travers's emerald necklace (EMERALD, Tom King, it is an EMERALD necklace).
> 
> Also in this chapter is my headcanon that Bruce has a dynasty kink. Oops?

"So are we, like, _heroes_ now?" Holly asked.

They were driving away from the shelter on Newell Avenue. The director had been crying as they left, sobbing her thanks repeatedly over a hundred thousand dollars in unmarked bills. She had to know where it had come from—or at least, how it'd been attained—but she hadn't cared. Money was money, and desperate people rarely tracked their blessings down to the source.

But were they _heroes?_ Selina snorted. Wonder Woman would have something to say about _that._ "I think that ship has sailed," she said. Selina would never be welcomed inside the Hall of Justice, but that was fine. She'd just break in.

Holly shook her head. "Who even decides that anyway? Is it Superman, or does the entire Justice League put it to a vote?" Selina only shrugged, so she said, "Well, _I_ think you're a hero, and so does Karon. Slam, too, and the Alleytown Kids are all either in love with you or they want to be you. And I think Maggie might be coming around to your way of doing things."

"Grudgingly," Selina agreed wryly.

Maggie hadn't been pleased when she found out Selina had gone back to Catwoman, but she could acknowledge the good Selina did in costume. _Grudgingly_ , but she could do it. She had been even less happy about losing her dream brother-in-law, but the target of her anger shifted after Holly told her the full story. Only common sense kept Maggie from storming Wayne Manor after that.

It took Selina awhile to understand why. _She_ had expected this. _She_ had been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since Gotham's Prince took her to the most exclusive restaurant in the city for their first date. It'd seemed too good to be true, and sure enough, it had been. But Bruce had further to fall in Maggie's estimation. She'd adored him, and she'd wanted him to make an honest woman out of her sister.

Maggie was the only one who thought that might happen. Everyone else knew how their relationship was going to end.

Even Selina. _Especially_ Selina.

Bruce had _tried_ to apologize, but Selina refused to hear a word he said. Something about mind control, possession, _whatever._ She didn't care. Bruce could come up with all the excuses in the world, all the  _contingencies—_ he still thought she might have done it.

 

With her arrest and her legal troubles, with ARGUS and Batman, Selina had almost forgotten how much she had loved being Catwoman. She had almost forgotten how wonderful it was to run through her city, scaling buildings and jumping alleyways, _taking_ what had been horded from them.

She had almost forgotten how wonderful it was to outsmart Batman. To escape him _just barely_ , laughing, with the loot in hand.

She didn't run into the Caped Crusader as often as she thought she might. Selina had been sure Batman would step out of the shadows the night she put her new suit on for the first time and growl, _"You're better than this, Selina,"_ like he had all those years ago. But he hadn't. He was a no-show. He didn't call, he didn't write, and he didn't corner her on rooftops to ask her, "What exactly do you think you're doing?"

She ran into him so rarely, in fact, that she'd started to wonder if he were _avoiding_ her. It was ridiculous, maybe—Batman, avoiding _her?_ —but it was the only explanation she could come up with that made anything approaching sense. Batman got into everyone else's business, so why not hers? Why was she the only vigilante or Rogue in town who got away with only the occasional growled _"Catwoman"_ and civil nod? Why was her business suddenly so unquestionable when even his sidekicks got the third degree?

Seriously: _Why not hers?_

She almost asked him, outright, but circumstances conspired against her.

They had run into each other in Robinson Park, both of them following the trail of several mysteriously dead bodies, and team-ups provided wonderful opportunities for getting to know one's fellow vigilantes. But she didn't get a chance to ask her question. Poison Ivy was being a pain. _Some people_ just didn't like it when the heroes put a stop to their murder sprees. Selina would never understand why.

Once Ivy was carted off to Arkham—screaming about her babies the whole way—though, Selina was left with an overabundance of adrenaline and a blissfully free night. "How about it, handsome?" she asked tonight's partner-in-justice, leaning in close and taking in the half-forgotten smell of sweat and alumina. "You, me, a blindfold? For old time's sake?"

Batman didn't so much as twitch. "That's not a good idea," he said. His voice sounded colder, more mechanical than it usually did.

She laughed. "It was never a good idea."

"No, it never was."

This was different. Selina knew it, and beneath her mask, her face burned in embarrassment. This wasn't the shy lawman act of yesteryear, the pretense that had always fallen to the wayside with a bit of teasing and a smile. It wasn't even the stern daddy-knows-best act he put on in front of Robin and Batgirl. This was a _rejection_. It was a real and actual rejection from _him_.

She hadn't started things between them. _He_ had. He had come to that apartment that night, _knowing_ she was robbing it, and fucked her on a gangster's mattress. _He_ had stood in the middle of her apartment like a sentinel of discomfort until she took him to her bed.

And now he was _rejecting_ _her?_

There were a thousand reasons why. Maybe he had grown up, and he really did think their past behavior was unhealthy. Maybe he had found a real girlfriend willing to put up with his nighttime excursions.

Maybe it was _her._ She was older. She was more scarred, more _muscular,_ and she kept her hair shorter now. She had ping-ponged from criminal to government agent, from civilian to Robin Hood, and even she didn't know which one was the real Selina Kyle. _He_ cared about that sort of thing.  _He_ knew she had tried to be a good person, and he knew she had failed.

Selina fixed a smirk onto her face. "Right, I forgot—your type is brunette and _villainous_. What's the matter, hero, did I commit too many good deeds?"

He stuttered something unintelligible, his breath whirring through the vocal modulator, but she didn't wait around to hear his excuses or his empty flattery. Catwoman jumped off the roof, and Batman watched her go.

 

Then it was Catwoman's turn to avoid Batman. It didn't take much effort considering he was still avoiding _her_ , but still. She didn't hang around when they ran into each other, and the one time he said, "Catwoman, wait," she was already sprinting across the skyline, away from him.

But anyone playing the hero in Gotham knew there was no avoiding Batman. Not for long. There was always _something._

"Something" turned out to be the Scarecrow, and Selina was far from happy about that.

Catwoman had never liked Scarecrow, and Selina Kyle had always hated Jonathan Crane. He was a petty little man who deserved every punch Batman and his kids had ever landed on his grotesque little head. He had thrown away his education and his privilege to embark on a life of super-villainy, and why? So he could make others as afraid as he was? It was _pathetic._

Her feelings didn't change any when the trap was sprung and fear gas filled her nose and mouth _._

First the gas clogged her airways, leaving her choking and gasping for breath, sending her body into overdrive even before the panic settled in. Then her heart began to beat faster and faster, her blood thrumming through her veins, her hands shaking.

Every creak of the old warehouse was a threat. Her throat was bone-dry, her breath came in stutters, and her mind struggled to make sense of the overriding fear she felt—and sent her on a mental tour of all her past traumas, the only way it could conceptualize what it was experiencing: her mother's body cooling in the bathtub, her blood splattered on the walls and floor; her father's creeping hands and thundering fists; the nights she spent locked away in solitary; a deal in an alleyway, the choice between bitter independence and illusionary safety; beaten, battered, and left for dead; arrested and chained.

"—tay calm—inject—tidote—"

Something grabbed at her, and she whipped out her hands to shove it away. She knew how to fight, but she had forgotten. All she could do was shove and scratch at the beast attacking her, but it was unaffected. Its claws took her by the biceps, and she kicked and screamed, and she accomplished nothing.

"—it's fear—Crane—safe—"

She couldn't understand its growls. She sobbed and murmured _please_ and _stop_ and _don't hurt me,_ and the beast breathed out a gust of air that made her whimper. It released her, and she scrambled backwards, her head spinning, her sweaty hands slipping on the floor, unbalancing her, as she crawled backwards. The beast followed her with sure, calm steps, and she cringed and whined and prayed.

"Selina!"

The beast took off its head, and her panic faltered as her reason gained hold for a brief moment of clarity and genuine shock.

"Bruce?"

The sudden sensation of a needle entering her neck made her gasp, but her eyes remained wide open and fixed on a familiar face. He didn't meet her eyes. He refused to look at her as the antidote entered her system.

Selina did the only sensible thing she could do under the circumstances. She gave in to the sedative.

 

Selina woke up in an unfamiliar bed. It took her a moment to realize she had to be in Wayne Manor. She had never slept there before. She had never been inside one of its many bedrooms. Either Bruce had come over to her apartment, or they'd fucked in the backseat of a car. Her visits to Wayne Manor had been brief to the point of rudeness.

Batman had come to her apartment too. He had never taken her to his place, and she had never bothered to wonder where he lived.

Selina closed her eyes and breathed out. Bruce Wayne was Batman. Her ex-boyfriend and her ex-lover were one in the same, and he had revealed his double identity to her to save her from a heart attack by way of Professor Crane's fear gas. She supposed she ought to feel grateful for that. It had _worked._ The shock of the discovery had snapped her out of her panic, and she would live to kick Scarecrow's ass.

He wouldn't reveal his identity to just anyone. He valued her life more than his secrets.

And he valued his secrets _a lot._

Selina had more than a few thoughts about that, but she couldn't examine those in any detail right now. The man of the hour wouldn't give her any time for that.

The door opened without a sound. Selina didn't doubt that every hinge in the whole massive fucking building was perfectly oiled. "You're awake," he said, and it didn't sound stupid coming from _him._ He made even pointless comments sound like grave pronouncements.

He was dressed in a Mammoths shirt and jeans, his face darkened by stubble. Selina had never seen him dressed so casually before. It was either three-piece suits, polo shirts, or body armor with him. Or maybe not. Maybe she'd never even _seen_ him, and the men she'd met were nothing more than parts played by a master actor who was a _shoo-in_ for an Oscar nomination this year.

She had never known him at all, had she? Selina had slept with Batman for a year—she'd dated Bruce Wayne for _months_ —but she'd hadn't, really. She'd been a dupe.

Her Catwoman costume was nowhere in sight. She was dressed in women's pajamas, a sweet girlish number with a floral pattern and a pink lace trim. She wondered which one of Bruce's girlfriends had left _these_ behind. "Where's my costume?" she asked, staring down at her lap. The comforter was made from royal blue silk and velvet, with gold cording, and she wanted nothing more right then than to commit a dash of grand theft auto and get out of this place.

"In the bathroom," he answered. She didn't look up at him. "Forgive me for changing you, but you were… Your costume needed to be cleaned."

She hadn't even thought to be upset by that. "Yeah, sure. Which one's the bathroom?"

His bedroom—or _was_ it his bedroom?—was so obnoxiously grandiose that there were _five_ doors, two of which formed the double doors which he'd entered through, and Selina had no way of knowing which one led where until Bruce indicated one. She wondered what the other two doors led to. One of them was a closet, probably, but the other?

 _How the other half lives, huh,_ she mused bitterly, and she pulled herself out of the bed. Bruce was still standing there, his hands in his pockets, staring at a painting of Hylas and the nymphs. He cleared his throat and began, "Selina, I—"

She jerked her head to look away from him. "I don't want to talk to you," she snapped.

"Okay… that's—okay. But we can talk later?"

Selina huffed. "I'm not going to tell anyone. Your secrets are safe with me."

"That's not why."

Selina decided enough was enough, and she practically sprinted to the door he had indicated. The bathroom was just as pointlessly ornate as the bedroom. There were two bags waiting for her on a chair—he had an _armchair_ in his  _bathroom_ —one of which held her costume, the other of which held clothing. The clothes weren't hers, but they were all her size. She didn't feel comfortable pondering that one for too long.

"Whose pajamas are these?" she called out as she pulled that lacy monstrosity of a shirt over her head.

Bruce's voice was muffled by the door. "Batgirl's. She left several changes of clothes in the Cave, just in case."

Selina hoped Batgirl was wearing a wig. Few redheads could pull off this shade of pink. "I didn't think this sort of thing was her style," she said.

"I believe they were a gift."

Selina hummed in response before walking out the _other_ door and into the hallway. She doubted she had fooled Bruce any, but he wasn't following her. That was the most important thing right now.

 

By the time Selina hit Otisburg—she'd taken the Trevita, of course—she understood why Batman had been avoiding her. It had to be awkward to run into your ex when she didn't know she was your ex, and he'd had to deal with that twice now.

He was still an asshole, but at least she understood _some_ aspect of this whole messed up situation.

Which was good because, outside of that, she was horrifically confused. She had known Batman— _Bruce,_ whoever he was—for nearly ten years now. She'd slept with him, she'd dated him, but she hadn't put it together and figured out that they were the same man?

But then again, why would she? She hadn't spent more than five consecutive minutes in Batman's company in _years_ by the time ARGUS released her, and she could barely remember the sound of his voice or the outline of his face as he had revealed it to her that night during the War of Jokes and Riddles. The other evidence she had was even less helpful. Bruce disappeared a lot, and he had unexplained scars? There were more logical excuses for that than _he's a secret vigilante._ Batman was tall, athletic, and rich? So was J. Devlin Davenport, and he sure as hell wasn't a superhero.

She took a deep breath and forgave herself.

Forgiving Bruce was harder. _He'd_ known. Selina had made her choices without knowing all the details, but he had known everything from the first.

He'd taken advantage of her.

Selina had never thought she'd apply that phrase to herself, but he _had._ It was one thing when they'd been Batman and Catwoman. She'd agreed to that knowing full well that he knew her secret identity and that she couldn't know his. It would've been another thing to date her as Bruce Wayne, knowing what he did, but to do both? _That_ was an unequal relationship. That was a betrayal of her trust.

 _He offered to show you his identity,_ a wicked voice reminded her. _You knew what he was offering when he turned on the bathroom light after your first night together, you stopped him from taking off your blindfold after the second night. You **chose** to remain ignorant._

She told the voice to shut up and drove.

 

Selina didn't mean to keep thinking of Bruce, but she couldn't help herself. Suddenly he _made sense_ in a way he hadn't before, as Batman or Bruce Wayne. She had believed them both to be such simple and straightforward characters until now. Now she could see _him_ and finally understand all his complexities—the philanthropist and the vigilante. The billionaire and the knight. Judge, jury, and public defender.

Had he thought the same when he learned Catwoman's real name?

 

Selina learned about Francesca Kingston's party the old-fashioned way. Her fence Swifty heard about it from his friend Caleb, who drove for old Mrs. Travers, and Caleb had heard about it because Martha Travers had told everyone how the Kingstons had gone too far this time—imagine, _Francesca Kingston_ thinking that she could get away with inviting _Martha Travers_ anywhere! Who did she think she was? Did she really think that a Travers,  _any_ Travers, would _accept_ such an imposition?

Selina had always liked Mrs. Travers. She liked her so much, in fact, that she was almost sorry for stealing her emeralds that one time. _Almost._ It had been business, and Selina didn't make a fuss over personal relationships when it came to business. Anyway, Batman had stopped her before she could even get them off the boat.

"Good crowd otherwise," Swifty mused. "Darracotts, Vreelands, Cantwells. Even Bruce Wayne'll be there, and he's got more reason than Travers to be a stickler. Those ladies will be wearing fortunes, all of them, and the men too. Don't know why you've gone Robin Hood, 'lina, but I don't care. I still get my fee."

She smirked. _Bruce Wayne, huh?_ "So you do, Swifty."

She said a silent apology to her friend and his bank account. She wasn't going to rob the place. She'd be suspect numbers one through one hundred if she did, considering she was going to the party herself as plain old Selina Kyle.

No, she wasn't invited. She was going anyway.

Selina hadn't contacted Bruce since she'd dropped the Trevita off at Wayne Tower. She didn't have anything to say, and she assumed he didn't either because he hadn't said a peep to her. They hadn't run into each other on patrols, he hadn't "coincidentally" stopped by when she had lunch with Dr. Thompkins, and she hadn't dropped into any of his jet-setter parties, whether disguised or not.

This was going to change things.

Selina searched the room, careful to make it look as though she were _not_ , as the other guests looked at her, wondering why she was here and if she had come with Bruce or if another rich man had fallen victim to a pretty face and ample charms. Cornelia Cantwell and gaggle of her friends giggled when Selina walked past them, and she hoped they found some common sense before Nocturna attacked another ballroom.

She found Bruce deep in a very unpleasant conversation with Mayor Hill and his wife. It was so strange to see him as _Bruce Wayne_ now that she knew the truth. Now observing him at work was like looking at a diamond and seeing how the light reflected off all its facets.

Bruce scowled, breaking cover, as Hill expounded some awful argument, and Selina grinned. She would have to rescue him, wouldn't she? Only a supervillain would leave him to the tender mercies of Mayor Hamilton Hill, and Selina wasn't a supervillain anymore.

"Is chivalry dead?" she asked two seconds after Hill told a joke so offensive Bruce actually  _growled._ She stretched out her hand, and Bruce eyed it with palpable relief. "Mr. Wayne, here standing before you is a woman in dire need of a dance partner. Are you going to let her suffer without?"

He took her hand.

The dance floor was crowded with people, the men wearing bespoke tuxedos and the women dressed in jewel-colored gowns more expensive than Selina's apartment. They twirled to the music, following steps their mothers had learned from their mothers, as the skirts flew around their legs, and the other guests laughed and drank, forgetting the reason why they were all here tonight. Selina and Bruce were as alone as they could be. Alfred wasn't going to step out of the shadows with a tray of glasses and a deceptively mild remark, and Dick and Jason were locked away in their respective homes.

Bruce kept his hand resolutely on her hip. He used to place it on her lower back. "I owe you an apology," he said without preamble.

"You're sorry," she said, nonplussed.

Selina hadn't expected him to dive right into it. But she should have. He had to know why she had sought him out tonight, he knew everything about her, and of course he had a plan in place for when Selina decided they needed to have this talk.

Sometimes, it felt like he _wanted_ to be hated.

Bruce kept his eyes fixed on hers, steady and sincere. "I am sorry, Selina. I deceived you and allowed you to enter into a relationship you might not have if you'd known all the facts. I maintained the lie long past the point of common decency. And I believed the worst of you on flimsy evidence. That was wrong of me, and I apologize."

It was worse now that he had apologized, somehow. She wasn't angry anymore, just tired and sad. "Why did you do it?" she asked softly.

"Because I wanted to date you."

Selina flushed. "I meant, why did you—" she resorted to his phrasing "— _maintain_ the lie?"

He exhaled. "I don't know. I told myself that it wasn't my secret to tell. Things were different when we were starting out, back then it was just me. Now it's Dick and Barbara, and Jason, and even the other members of the League. Revealing my identity threatens their own, and I couldn't make that decision without their permission. But I didn't ask them either, so it was _my_ decision to keep it from you."

Her hand clenched unthinkingly on his shoulder. "Was it because of _me? Am I so untrustworthy?"_

His mouth dropped open. "No!" Another couple looked over, drawn by the volume of his protest, so Bruce said again, more quietly, "No. I trust you, Selina. I always have."

She wouldn't look away. "I don't know if I can believe that. I know I'm in no position to talk about lying, but it seems to me that even when I _do_ lie, you always know the truth. But the opposite isn't true."

"I can be honest with you, Selina. I will be," he swore.

"We'll see." Selina looked away to glance around at the other couples dancing what was once the eighteenth century form of grinding, and she laughed. His hand twitched against her hip. "Why was Martha Travers so offended when she got invited to this shindig?" It seemed like a perfectly ordinary upper-class party, fancy and boring and dripping with jewels Selina couldn't touch.

"I assume there's a story there?" Selina only smiled. "Well, I never know  _what_ Martha Travers is thinking, but I could hazard a guess: Francesca Kingston was a Maroni before her marriage. A distant cousin, not a daughter or a niece. Mrs. Travers considers socializing with mobsters a faux pas."

Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. "She's _barely_ mobbed up, and Travers considers her a social pariah?"

"Hm."

That was beyond confusing. "She never treated me too badly," Selina said, her eyebrows at her hairline. "I mean, she obviously thought I was a fortune-hunting harlot, but she was remarkably civil about it."

"I don't believe she knows about your… _connection_ to Carmine Falcone."

Selina scoffed. _"My connection,"_ she echoed skeptically. "Really?" It sounded so _classy_ when he put it like that.

Bruce shrugged.

Carmine Falcone used to attend parties like this one all the time. Martha Travers's disapproval had meant little in the face of his wealth and power and the appearance of philanthropy. He had socialized with Thomas and Martha Wayne under the glittering lights, all of them wearing glittering jewels. On his arm had been his Calvi wife, and at their heels had been their three beautiful children, true mafia royalty.

 _Trueborn_ mafia royalty.

Maria Kyle had never been invited to a party like this. She had spent the entirety of her short life shunted away in the East End, toiling for her husband and children, dreaming of an escape that never came until she _made_ her own escape and broke her daughters in the process. Carmine Falcone had never given her a second thought after he'd gotten what he wanted from her, and Selina would never know what Maria had wanted. _If_ she had wanted it.

Selina Kyle had never been invited to a party like this either. She had stolen inside, disguised, or she had come on Bruce Wayne's arm amidst the sneers and the glares of his peers. She had never been welcome, and she never would be.

"Coatroom," Selina said suddenly.

Bruce stared. "What?"

"You, me, coatroom… It's pretty self-explanatory, handsome."

"Right now?"

She smirked up at him. Even wearing high heels, she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. "Do you not want to?"

He shifted from one foot to the other. "That's neither here nor there," he said, lofty and uncomfortable. "We're not… _together,_ Selina. And we're attending a fundraiser for children with _cancer_. It would be unconscionable."

Selina let him finish before asking again, " _So_ … coatroom?"

His eyes danced around the ballroom, glancing at the other guests, the caterers, the musicians.

Coatrooms were notoriously badly designed when it came to having sex, but they made it work. Batman was keeping a low profile with Hamilton Hill in office and Jason at home, suspicious and fearful of his new father, which meant that, for once, Bruce was uninjured. Wall sex was not only possible, it was necessary.

And Bruce was good at it.

Within seconds, her panties were flung into a dark corner and she was pressed up against the wall, Bruce on top of her, his mouth fused to hers and his fingers fumbling with his belt. Selina had _missed_ this. She had missed the boyish spark in Bruce's eye and his choked-off laughter. She had missed the unflinching rhythm of his hips and the insistent play of his fingers.

She had missed _him—_ Batman's quiet consideration, Bruce's devotion and generosity, his belief that she was _better._

She'd even missed the friction of his trousers against her thighs. Selina wrapped her legs around him as he hoisted her higher. "I'm going to take you home," he whispered into her ear. She whimpered. "After this, I'm taking you _home_. I'm going take you to _my bed,_ and I'm going to fuck you there. _Two hundred years_ that bed has been in the family, you know that? _Eight_ _generations_. I'm going to strip you naked and lay you down and eat you out for _hours_. Make you— _hn—_ _scream_."

She stuttered a senseless "yeah—y-yeah?" as Bruce thrust _again_ and _again_ , mouthing at her neck, making it _impossible_ for her to walk out of here with anything approaching discretion, and she tightened her legs around him as the world crashed into colors and lights and an indiscreetly loud moan.

The coat check attendant knocked frantically on the door.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes lines from Batman (2016) #32 and elements from Catwoman (2018) #1. Selina again references her first appearance in Batman (1940) #1, Catwoman turned Superman into a cat in Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane (1955) #70, and she joined the Injustice League in Silver Age Showcase (2000) #1.
> 
> The Wayne/Kane family tree continues to bewilder me, but I tried! You'll notice I didn't reference Kathy Kane (Webb? Netz? idk!) or Uncle Philip (who is both a Wayne and a Kane, somehow) at all, and I kept Bette's parentage vague because she _still_ doesn't have canonical parents. Aunt Agatha is from Batman (1940) #89, and Cousin Jane is from Batman #93. And, according to Batman Secret Files and Origins (1997) #1, Bruce's great-grandmother, Laura Wayne, _was_ a Prohibitionist.

Holly called it the seesaw.

Selina and Bruce were on-and-off so often that half the time even Selina didn't know whether they were exes, friends with benefits, or boyfriend and girlfriend. She was pretty sure Bruce didn't know either because his kids _definitely_ didn't. More than once, one of them had texted her out of the blue and asked if she were coming to this thing or that, and she had to text back a shrug emoji.

It was a pretty good sign that they were _on_ when Bruce came over to her apartment for dinner and she didn't think anything of it. He'd been coming by more and more often lately, and she knew it couldn't be for the food. Selina was far from a good cook (and if Alfred were within a twenty mile radius, she didn't even qualify as a _cook)._ Her only claims to culinary fame were that she hadn't burned anything in years and she'd never poisoned anybody accidentally.

At least she was a better cook than Bruce. Everything he made was perfectly done, technically, but the practical equivalent of a PhD in chemistry didn't give him any knowledge of _seasoning._ And worse, he didn't care. The man would eat boiled chicken and down protein shakes for every single meal without complaint if left to his own devices.

Bruce didn't complain about her cooking either. He ate it with the same lack of interest with which he ate everything, said "thank you," and washed the dishes like he had googled "what to do when your girlfriend cooks you dinner" and absorbed everything the article had advised.

Selina heard the water turn off and turned the TV to GBS, landing on Olivia Ortega mid-segment. Bruce appeared in the doorway a moment later and sat down beside her on the couch, wrapping his arm around her as he focused on the news. "Arsonist in Crown Point," she said. "No deaths yet, but an old woman was hospitalized."

"It's the Penguin. Black Bat and Spoiler are handling it tonight."

Selina wrinkled her nose. She was going to hear _that_ story three times and three different ways. Which made her ask, "When are you heading out?" Steph—and probably Cass too—would want her to keep Bruce out of their way for a while.

"I'm not." He wouldn't meet her eyes. "I took the night off."

The last time Bruce had taken a night off, he'd been lost in the time stream. "What did Oracle say about that?" she demanded.

"Nothing." That already didn't sound right, _then_ Bruce added, "We don't have to watch the news."

Selina hoped this was just one of Bruce's peculiar fits. She did _not_ want to deal with a shapeshifting supervillain tonight. "We _always_ watch the news," she reminded him, and still he wouldn't meet her eyes.

"But we don't have to. If there's something else you want to watch…"

"I've got a DVR. And Netflix."

Bruce dropped the subject.

The news broadcast was no better or worse than it was on any other night. They knew more than the reporters did, per usual, and they talked over them—Selina relayed rumors she'd heard from her underworld contacts, Bruce rewarded her with insider information on what the Bats and Birds had planned, and they laughed at the surveillance footage from Killer Moth's latest "heist."

When the local programming ended and the _Manstalker_ opening filled the screen, it was Selina's cue to seal her mouth to Bruce's, and they were off to the races.

Making out on the couch was maybe just a little bit juvenile, even if they were doing it while watching Jack Ryder's nightly ravings, but Selina figured she was owed this. Bruce, too. Neither of them had a typical adolescence, and who else were they going to explore this with? Bruce had a bizarre habit of dating _normal_ women, Catwoman and the Demon's Daughter aside, and Selina's own dating history was, well— _interesting._

Selina moaned as Bruce sucked his way down her neck. She allowed him to continue for a few moments more before tangling her fingers in his hair and reluctantly tugging him away. “You leave a hickey, you explain it to your kids,” she said.

"They know what hickeys are," he grumbled.

On the TV, Ryder was explaining his twelve-step conspiracy theory connecting Firestorm to flooding in Rheelasia. "We don't _need_ to watch this," Bruce said, though he was as fascinated as he was repulsed.

Selina already had the remote in hand. "Bed?" she asked as the picture disappeared. It wasn't even eight o'clock yet, but she was sure they'd find _something_ to do.

"Y-no," he stuttered, and Selina's grip on the remote tightened. It would serve as a weapon, she figured, if only for a moment, if it turned out that this _wasn't_ really Bruce. Then Bruce cleared his throat and said, "Selina, I love you."

She set the remote down.

Bruce stood up and walked over to the window, staring down at the grimy Bowery street. "I _have_ to love you. We've known each other for so long—longer than I've known the children, or Clark and Diana. We've seen each other at our highs and our lows, and we've worked together and worked against each other. I have witnessed the infinity of the multiverse, and I can't conceive of a universe where I don't love you. But that doesn't mean… You don't _have_ to love me. I know my flaws. I know I've hurt you."

"Bruce—" Selina didn't know what to say. She was sitting on her couch, staring at _Bruce Wayne_ —at _Batman_ —as he opened his heart to her, like something out of an old and half-forgotten fantasy, and _she didn't know what to say._ "I've hurt you too," she managed, and worst of all, she _had._ She had lied and cheated and stolen, and she had thrown all his offers of help back in his face. She'd been a member of the Injustice League and ARGUS, working against him and his friends in the Justice League on multiple occasions. She'd turned Superman into a _cat._

"I don't think that's comparable," he said quietly. "But I'm going to be selfish. I want to be happy, and Selina, you make me happy."

She tittered nervously. "Are you sure about that?"

"I am. You make me happy, and I want to make you happy." Bruce sat back down on the couch, taking her hand in his. "Will you marry me?"

Selina thought about it. She imagined what it would be like to be Bruce's wife and the stepmother of his children. She imagined what it would be like to be _Mrs. Wayne_ , the wife of Wayne Enterprises' CEO, the mistress of Wayne Manor, and the most important woman in Gotham.

And she said, "Yes."

Bruce lit up like he'd never heard a more wonderful word in all his life. He pressed a kiss to her knuckles, then crossed room to the foyer where he had hung his jacket. He reached inside a pocket and pulled out a ring box. "I had your ring size in my files," he said a little bashfully as he popped open the box.

He slid the ring onto her finger, and Selina lifted her hand up to better admire it—three oval cut rubies and two Old European cut diamonds, claw and grain set in yellow gold with a scroll carved pattern. Well-made and well-preserved. Hardly a big ticket item, but it would fetch a respectable price on the black market. "Edwardian?" she asked.

"Hm. My great-grandmother's. She was a Prohibitionist."

She imagined a grande dame with a hatchet in one hand and a Bible in the other, and she grinned. "I don't think we'd get along," she said. That didn't stop her from admiring the woman's taste in jewelry.

He was grinning too. "No, I don't think so."

 

Bruce told his children and Alfred. Selina told her sisters.

Holly was surprised more than anything. "Oh, _wow_. Honestly I thought you were well rid of him—" Karon coughed "—but this is great news! Great, great news! People change, and obviously he has. I'm happy if you're happy." Then she asked if Selina had given any thought to her bridesmaids yet, and Selina said she was still mulling it over, just to make her sweat.

Maggie beamed. "That's wonderful! What have you got planned?"

"Nothing so far," Selina replied, fidgeting a little like she always did when she visited the Immaculate Virgin Mission.

"I suppose the details don't matter, so long as it's a _good_ wedding."

Selina's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. "What's _that_ mean?"

"You _know_ what that means, and if you don't, you should've seen the coverage of Lewton wedding," Maggie said darkly.

Selina rolled her eyes. "Are nuns supposed to read gossip columns?" she asked, but Maggie didn't answer. She was preoccupied with the idea of an engagement party, and she steamrolled right over Selina's protests that they weren't having one and they wouldn't need one until Selina snapped, "Alright! Fine! Something small."

 

The engagement party didn't stay small for long. Bruce thought it sounded like a good idea, and he listed off the handful of people he wanted to invite—Commissioner Gordon, Dr. Thompkins, the Foxes, the founders of the Justice League, and some civilian friends. Then Alfred learned about their plans and reminded Bruce that he had family besides himself and his children ("and Ms. Kyle, of course"), business partners and government allies besides Lucius Fox and Jim Gordon, and fellow socialites who would be offended if Bruce neglected to invite them.

"How big is this party going to be?" Selina groused when the butler was finished.

Alfred raised an eyebrow. "The Waynes always entertain on a large scale, Ms. Kyle," he said.

Bruce gave in. He wanted a smaller party too, but he thought Alfred was right. "You don't want to invite anyone else?" he asked. Selina had only added four names to the guest list. "It's all people from my side."

"Everyone else I know will suddenly and miraculously have other plans the second I tell them cops are going to be here," she told him, trying not to look at him like he was an idiot. He _knew_ the kind of people she knew.

Bruce frowned. "Invite them," he said. "To this and to the wedding. I'll talk to Jim."

Selina didn't. She had hardly dreamed of having Swifty walk her down the aisle, and she wasn't going to make a fuss because Arizona and the O'Boyles couldn't come. There was no point in rocking the boat.

She did almost wish that she _had_ when she saw how many people were crowded inside the dining room. When she met Bruce's family.

She had met his cousin Kate before, as Catwoman and Batwoman, but the others were a mystery to her even after years of dating their relative and public appearances in the same city. Kate's father shook her hand seriously and said it was past time for Bruce to settle down, and his wife—Kate's stepmother—asked her about "her people" so pointedly Selina could only gesture to Maggie and say, "Just her." The nun's habit didn't reassure the older woman any, but it made Bette giggle. "This is why the tabloids love you," she said, and her parents both elbowed her. _They_ were nonentities, so Selina liked them better than she liked the rest of the Kanes.

The Waynes were less friendly. The more distant cousins were just happy to be acknowledged by the paterfamilias, for once, but Thomas Wayne had left behind a sister and a niece.

Bruce's aunt Agatha eyed Selina with obvious dislike and said, in a voice so pleasant it had to be fake, "Well, there's nothing wrong with fresh blood in the family. Goodness knows you've introduced plenty, Bruce, and the company has never been so popular since you took over and started spending all the money on your little foundation. People _do_ like hearing all about your charitable endeavors."

Selina's mouth dropped open. _"Aunt Agatha,"_ Bruce growled out warningly.

Agatha was undeterred. "Oh, it's a good thing, Bruce! Don't be so dull. Such a serious boy—and he always was. I don't know what the fools at _Vue_ think they're doing, making up those silly stories about him getting drunk on _yachts_ and having affairs with _Russian ballerinas_."

Her daughter steered her away from the reception line, her sorry excuse for a husband in tow, and Selina forced a smirk when Bruce looked over at her. "She's _fun_ ," she said sarcastically. "How often do you see her in a year?"

"As infrequently as possible," Bruce admitted.

Selina managed to avoid Agatha for the rest of the night, but she couldn't avoid Jane while they were milling around the drawing room after dinner. Better Cousin Jane than Commissioner Gordon, she figured, and at least she didn't have to deal with Jane's husband too—he was arguing, teeth-clenched, about proper policing with Slam and Martian Manhunter as though _he_ knew anything about it.

"I'm sorry about Mom," Jane said as an opening. "She's got old-fashioned notions about what it means to be a Wayne. She's been offended, oh, ever since Bruce took in Richard. And her offense quadrupled when he adopted Jason." She took a sip of wine. "What about your family? Is it just you and your sister?"

 _This again._ "Since our dad died," she confirmed. Even the  _Guardian_ had hesitated to print the rumors of her parentage without sufficient evidence (and there wasn't any, not anymore), so it was safe to pretend like they weren't true.

Jane nodded. "No aunts and uncles, no cousins?" she asked with every appearance of sympathy.

"No one I talk to," Selina answered simply. Maria had been an only child, and her parents had died when Selina was a baby. Brian's parents had died before she knew them too, though Selina didn't know how or when they'd died, only that they'd kicked the bucket before Selina and Maggie were taken from Brian's custody, and his siblings had all refused to have anything to do with their nieces when their social worker contacted them. If she had any cousins on that side, Selina had never heard about them.

"But will they talk to the papers?"

Selina struggled to stay calm. "If they haven't gone to the papers yet," she said curtly, "I doubt they're going to talk now. The worst of what they _can_ publish, they've published." She hoped. There were _things…_ But she'd talked to Oracle, and Barbara had blanched, then promised to keep an eye out on the dark web. No newspaper or magazine could publish anything about _that_ sort of thing without a legal shitstorm, first from the state and then from Bruce's lawyers, but the rumor of it online could be just as damaging.

She took a gulp of wine.

Jane smiled awkwardly. "That's, uh… That's a lovely necklace you're wearing."

Selina raised a hand to her neck, her fingers brushing up against emeralds. "Thank you," she said. "It was an engagement present."

"From Bruce?"

"Who else?" Selina asked sharply, and the other woman blushed.

Selina had given little thought to Martha Travers's emeralds, in and of themselves, in the years since. To her the night had been nothing more than an early and disappointing failure, but not to Bruce. He remembered the night _fondly,_ reminiscing more than once about how quick she'd been, how clever and daring, and he had bought the necklace and the rest of the set from Martha Travers the second he heard rumors that she intended to sell them.

He'd given them to her earlier that evening, in his bedroom, and he had dismissed her worries that they clashed with her engagement ring. "No one is going to notice except you and me," he'd sworn, and he'd wrapped the necklace around her neck and pronounced it—or her—"beautiful" before lifting her out of the chair and carrying her to his bed, where he'd laid her down and stripped off her clothes, thrown her legs over his shoulders, and ate her out while she was wearing nothing but her necklace and the ring. She had thought she was going to rip his hair out, she was pulling so hard, but mere hours later, he looked as polished as ever.

And so far he was right—no one had noticed that the emeralds clashed with her engagement ring. She was almost offended. Rich people should know jewelry better than this.

Jane coughed. "I should go and find my mother," she said apologetically. Agatha was nowhere in sight, but neither was Bruce nor Maggie. "She's probably digging through the bedrooms and getting upset because Bruce dared redecorate the very room in which Solomon Zebediah Wayne breathed his last."

"Which room was that?" Selina asked, but Jane was walking away and didn't hear her.

Selina sighed. She weaved her way through the guests, tapping Dick on the shoulder and whispering, "You're in charge," as she passed him by, and grabbing Holly by the elbow and hissing, "Where's my sister?"

"She went to the bathroom." Holly pulled her arm out of Selina's grip. "Bruce showed her the way, but he hasn't come back yet—his hag of an aunt followed him out of the room, so _you know_ she's starting trouble."

"She's not a hag," Selina said, even though she _was._ "Cover for me, I'm going in."

Holly looked doubtful. "Those two reporters are already looking over at you."

Selina wished she could go back to the time when she'd thought Superman spent all his free time at the Fortress of Solitude. Clark Kent was distressingly helpful, and Lois Lane was _nosy_. "Yeah, they would be. Don't worry about it."

She brushed shoulders with Maggie as she left the room and Maggie entered it. She glared, and Maggie stuck her tongue out.

Selina knew Bruce would want any confrontation he had with his aunt to take place in the study. It was his throne room, the one place where he could be both Batman and the Wayne of Wayne Manor. It was where he did his paperwork, where he pondered vigilantism and business, where his children came to be scolded and rewarded.

Through the study door, she could hear muffled voices raised in argument. She didn't stop.

Her feet took her to the library, and she found herself standing in front of the portrait of Thomas and Martha Wayne and their son, her wine glass still full and in her hand. There was nothing to do about it but to collapse onto the couch Bruce had placed so he could sit comfortably while staring at happier memories. There was nothing to do except drink her wine and wonder what was so special about this couple that, three decades later, people were still using them to win arguments.

She heard the door open, but she didn't turn around to see who it was. No threat was getting past the twenty superheroes in the drawing room tonight. "There you are, Selina," Leslie said. Selina raised her empty glass in acknowledgement. "Are you alright?"

"Who sent you?"

Leslie sat down next to her. "Mr. Kent expressed concern, though I'm sure he wouldn't have if I weren't craning my neck around looking for you," she said. There was no hiding what Selina had been doing, so Leslie added, "It's a lovely portrait. I forget who they hired—I'm sure Thomas told me at the time—but they did a wonderful job. These family portraits tend to be either uncannily realistic or, hmm, _embellished_. This one actually looks like them."

The Waynes must have been freakishly good-looking, then. "What would they think?" Selina asked.

Leslie frowned thoughtfully. "What would Thomas and Martha think of you?" she repeated. Selina nodded. "Well, that isn't an easy question to answer. So frequently we idealized the dead, and we forget what they were really like. It's been thirty years since their deaths, and I can't say I remember them well at all. But—" She bit her lip. "I don't know what Bruce has told you about them."

Selina shrugged. "He doesn't really talk about them. They were perfect, they were killed, he decided no child should go through what he did. Thus, Batman."

"Nobody can be _perfect,_ " Leslie cautioned.

That was one hell of a preamble. "Okay, doc," Selina said, leaning back into the sofa and looking her dead in the eye. "how _not-perfect_ were they?"

Leslie hesitated. "They were… Well, they were _rich._ Not like Bruce is rich. Bruce had something his parents never did, a genuine moment of fear and desperation, and he's never forgotten that. He's dedicated his life to studying what the people of Gotham need and how to give it to them." Leslie wasn't looking at her. "Thomas and I met in medical school, you know, and we were friends— _good_ friends—but he could be… _careless._ He _did_ care, he wouldn't have worked in the clinic with me if he didn't, but he didn't always _realize…_ he didn't always _think_ … Sometimes he would just _assume,_ and he hurt people. I can't say he wouldn't look at your history and think the worst of you, and with such a beginning… Well, I don't know what would have happened."

Selina's throat was dry. She must've drank her wine too quickly. "What about Martha?" she asked.

Leslie hemmed. "I genuinely don't know. Martha and I weren't as close," she admitted. "She was kind, though, and she did adore Bruce." Leslie's hand was calloused from hours of surgery, from piecing Gotham back together stitch by stitch. She squeezed Selina's hand in hers. "What about your parents? Would they like Bruce?"

Maria would. Selina knew that unquestionably. Her mother had nothing in her life except her dreams of something better for her daughters, and Bruce was miles and miles better than Brian Kyle—he was _rich_ , and he spent his money freely, without the arguments Maria used to have with her own husband over feeding and clothing their daughters.

That was why Brian would hate him, of course. Brian had hated and resented anyone who was better than him. He'd hated the rich, the powerful, the kindhearted, the even _passingly_ thoughtful. He would try to con Bruce out of every cent he had—and Bruce would give him money, to keep him quiet and because he was _Selina's_ father—but he'd hate him while he did it.

She hadn't known Carmine Falcone well enough to say, and the one time she'd met his wife, Louisa Falcone had ordered Selina's death.

Selina scoffed. "Who cares? They're dead."

 

Bruce grunted when they closed the door on the last guests. "I'm one more dinner party away from deciding that we should elope," he said. Alfred tutted, but he said nothing as he headed into the study and, from there, downstairs.

Selina thought that sounded _wonderful_. "I'm fine with eloping. We can pack your kids into the trunk and drive to Las Vegas tonight."

He smiled. "There would be a line from here to Stockman Square of people willing to murder me if we did that," he said, wrapping his arms around her and tucking her head underneath his chin, "and first in line would be your sister. By the way, she mentioned—St. Aloysius's had a cancellation for July fourth. I know it's soon, and we haven't discussed any details yet, but we can hurry the wedding planning along. If you want. It's better than a long engagement."

Maria used to take her daughters to St. Aloysius's for holidays, dressing Selina up in the nicest and cheapest dress she could find in Goodwill and dressing Maggie up in Selina's hand-me-downs. Selina remembered the scent of the candles, the spray of the holy water across her face, and the relief that they weren't home with _him_ for a few glorious hours. "You want a cathedral wedding?" she asked doubtfully.

Bruce rubbed his thumb against her hip. "Don't you? Maggie said you wanted to get married there when you were younger."

"I _did,_ but—" _I lived an entire lifetime after that, and I stopped dreaming of silly things like princess dresses and hundred-tier wedding cakes._

But if she couldn't dream of that _now_ when it was all so close at hand, when could she? For a second, the dream was a triumph—Selina Kyle, whore and thief, standing before the rich and powerful of Gotham, the people she had resented for so long, marrying the richest and most powerful of them all. But then she _remembered,_ and she imagined a different scene, the disapproval and disdain in their eyes as they watched her stealing their prince and dragging him down into the dirt with her.

"But?" Bruce prompted.

She pulled away from him and spoke sharply, "You're not Catholic, and I'm not either. Not anymore. Why on Earth would we have a cathedral wedding?"

Bruce frowned. "To please your sister?" he suggested. Irritably. "Because St. Aloysius's is one of the few places in the city that can fit all our guests?"

"We don't _have_ to invite all those people," she snapped. "I don't want those people at our wedding, and you don't either."

"It's expected."

She scowled. "By _whom,_ exactly? Your aunt?"

"No! Well, yes, but not just by her." He sighed and rubbed at his eyes. "I'm a _Wayne,_ Selina. That means something in this city. The Waynes _built_ this city, and people have expectations of us. My parents, my grandparents, _everyone,_ got married at St. James Cathedral, but neither of us are Episcopalian. We could have a Jewish ceremony, though I've never been _devout_ … but your sister is a nun. We might as well please her while we're pleasing everyone else, and you wanted to get married at St. Aloysius's when you were a child. Those reasons are as good as any."

"Why are we getting married to please everyone _except_ us?" she asked. Even she thought it sounded like whining.

Bruce reached his hand out for her, and she curled herself around him again. "Because that's what people do, I suppose," he said. He couldn't want a big wedding either, not with how carefully he guarded his heart. He'd prefer a courthouse, his children, and a handful of their friends, but he was suffering through this commotion so he could marry _her_.

 _Bruce Wayne_ was making himself unhappy over _Selina Kyle._

 

Bruce kissed her before he went downstairs to the Cave and left Selina alone in stately Wayne Manor.

She'd robbed the Manor, once, before she'd known Bruce Wayne as anyone besides a vacuously smiling idiot at the center of every high society party she crashed. She knew the house well, but only as it was under Bruce's ownership.

It must have been very different, before.

Selina tried to picture what the manor would be like if Bruce weren't Batman and too paranoid to allow people inside his house except when absolutely necessary. It would be filled with people, even at night—a housekeeper and a cook as well as an old butler at the end of his rope, dedicated maids and gardeners instead of weekly visits from outside services, nannies and tutors, footmen, a fucking _stablemaster._

Bruce probably imagined things would be very different from now on. With her sitting at the foot of the dining room table.

Selina thought about it. She imagined what it would be like to be Bruce's wife and the stepmother of his children. She imagined what it would be like to be _Mrs. Wayne_ , the wife of Wayne Enterprises' CEO, the mistress of Wayne Manor, and the most important woman in Gotham.

She imagined the look of disappointment on Bruce's face when she couldn't live up to all that, and she slid the engagement ring off her finger.

 

Villa Hermosa was nothing like Gotham. That was why she'd chosen it all those years ago when she was establishing safehouses up and down the country. That was why she fled there after she ran away from Wayne Manor.

She lasted a week. _Survived,_ more like, and she didn't even know how she was managing that. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat, all she did was drink and gamble and try to feel something except exhausted, scared, and devastated.

She had done the right thing, and it _hurt._

Selina had known for years that do-gooding wasn't the miracle cure people touted in cheap dramas. She wasn't _stupid._ She didn't expect to feel good about leaving Bruce with no note. With no explanation whatsoever. She'd known she was hurting him as much as she was hurting herself.

But if she'd stopped to write a note, if she'd delayed leaving for even _a second,_ she'd reconsider. She couldn't reconsider.

She _wasn't_ reconsidering. She was just… readjusting and reevaluating her life outside of Gotham.

The gambling den closed at nine o'clock in the morning after Selina had spent hours at the tables, gaining and losing a fortune. The next didn't open until eleven. That gave her two hours to kill, two hours without sleeping or eating.

Her feet faltered as she stepped outside.

She recognized Bruce in an instant. Of course she did. He had barely disguised himself. He was wearing an oil-stained shirt, faded jeans, and cheap sunglasses instead of one of his suits, but he wasn't hiding. He was just standing there, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, looking like a magazine spread, his hair mussed and his face unshaven.

 _Handsome,_ she thought, and her heart beat faster. Static filled her head. He was always handsome, but she'd never missed him so much before.

He pulled off his sunglasses and reached out to cup her chin, tilting her face upwards. "You look terrible," he said. He was frowning.

"Thanks," she said sarcastically.

He was one to talk. Selina got as good a look at Bruce as he did of her with them standing so close, and he looked terrible too—there were dark circles under his eyes, his skin was sallow, his hair was oily and unwashed. She didn't think the beard was a part of his disguise, either.

His breathing was soft and steady as he brushed his thumb across her chin and her jaw, and he said, in a voice too low to be overheard, "Selina… I didn't know what to think when you left like that."

Selina pulled away. "The obvious," she suggested, and she wouldn't look at him.

"I did suspect the obvious," he said, "but you kept the emeralds."

The emeralds, of course. She shouldn't have kept them. She had planned to leave them behind, but then she'd looked at them, and she'd thought, _Bruce bought these for **me**. He bought them because they're a piece of our history, and he gave them to me because he **loves** me. _Selina couldn't leave them behind then. They were hers, and she was already giving up so much of what was hers that night.

Around them, people were moving, trickling out of the gambling den, heading to work, doing their shopping, but they were standing in an alleyway, one of them trying to talk and the other fighting it. "Will you tell me why you left?" Bruce asked.

She _couldn't._ He'd disagree with her. "I don't have to," she said.

His mouth twisted into something like amusement. Or bitterness. "You don't. If you want me to leave, I will, and I'll never bother you again. You can come back to Gotham, see your friends… It's not _actually_ my city, Selina. You're free to come and go as you please. I won't bother you. The children won't either."

Selina didn't know what to say. She just _stood_ there.

Bruce breathed softly, and he moved to walk away. Selina _couldn't—_

"I'm sorry."

His shoulders stiffened. "Don't apologize. You don't… You don't have anything to apologize for."

She folded her arms across her chest and stared at the ground. "But I _am_ sorry," she muttered.

_"Why?"_

She exhaled and stood up straighter, placed her hands on her hips, tried to look like she knew what she was about. "I'm no good for that, Bruce. That's why I'm—You have to know that. Why you're fooling yourself, I don't—It was a mistake."

He studied her like she was a crime scene, and Selina's carefully straight spine shook. She would _not_ crumble, she _wouldn't._ It was just the exhaustion, anyway. "Was it a mistake for me to propose, or for you to say yes?" he asked, and _that_ was why she hadn't wanted this confrontation.

Fine. He could disagree with her all he liked, but she was right. "For you to propose," she answered, and she dug her nails into her hips.

Bruce wouldn't look away. He took a step forward, then two. "Was it something someone said, or was it… _everything_?"

Selina backed down. Her eyes jerked away. "It's been everything. Since the beginning. It was… Why did you have to propose?" She was crying. She was _crying_ like a stupid fucking little girl in an alleyway, surrounded by nine AM gamblers and normal people going about their stupid fucking lives, and Bruce was _looking_ at her as she fell apart, sobbing into her hands like an _idiot,_ with that _stupid_ expression on his face, like he thought she was  _too good_ for this. "We were _fine._ We could've just kept… Everything was _fine._ "

Bruce pulled her against his chest, and she crushed herself against him, still crying. "We _weren't_ fine. We lied to each other for years, then we were… These last couple years were _good,_ but they should've been better. I was acting like it was something secret. _Shameful._ I was trying to protect it from the outside world—trying to protect _you_ from my enemies—but in the end, I just made things worse. And I hurt you again when I tried to make things right." He pressed a kiss to her forehead and lingered there. "I know I went about this all wrong, but I still want to marry you. I want to live with you, and I want to have more children with you. I want to spend the rest of our lives together, however long that is. I want you to be _safe_ should the worst happen to me." He took a breath, then asked, "Do you want to marry me?"

His shirt was wet. She'd done that. He'd let her. " _Normal_ people do that kind of stuff. Not us. Not _me._ "

"I want to be normal people, at least for this. Don't you?"

When Selina had been eleven and still hopeful, she'd ecstatically told her mother and her sister that she wanted to _get married_ in St. Aloysius's Cathedral. Her mother had killed herself two months later, and the state had removed from Selina and Maggie from their father's custody before she was twelve. She'd been on the streets barely a year later, after brief stops in foster care and juvie, and then she was thirteen and being sold—she was sixteen and stealing—she was nineteen and a supervillain. It hadn't been safe to dream of something better. The one time she'd _dared,_ the Falcones had tried to kill her.

But this was different. Bruce wasn't going to let anyone hurt her, and she wasn't going to let anyone hurt _him_.

"Yeah," she mumbled. "I want to be normal. With you."

"Then fuck everything else," he said, so perfectly enunciated that she had to laugh.

 

They got in Bruce's car and started driving. "Before something changes our minds," Bruce said, staring at the road, the corner of his mouth pulled upwards. "We can send out cards or have a reception afterwards, it doesn't matter what we do. Everyone will be furious with us anyway."

Maggie would definitely be out for blood, and she wouldn't be alone. She'd be the only one who genuinely cared, though. "And the papers?" Selina asked, still wary. She could imagine the headlines now, and none of them were complimentary.

"Fuck the papers," Bruce said. "Except the _Daily Planet._ I own that one."

Selina laughed. "Do you own one of everything?" she wondered, and Bruce shrugged. Selina shook her head, still smiling. "You should call your kids. _They_ might _murder_ you if you get married without their knowing, and they can get away with it too. You've trained them too well."

Bruce called, and Selina listened with half an ear as he told whomever it was to gather everyone—Barbara and Stephanie too— _obviously_ Alfred, he's right there—and get on the jet, you're flying to Las Vegas. You know what, grab Holly Robinson and her girlfriend on your way—yes, I know the East End is out of your way, it's an _expression—_ because we'll need a witness, and I'm not dealing with your bickering if I pick one of you. Why else would I want you to fly to Las Vegas? _Of course_ Selina and I are getting married.

He hung up and said, "You'd think no one had ever had a Vegas wedding, the way they were carrying on."

"You haven't," she pointed out.

"No," he smiled brilliantly, "this is my first. You?"

She laughed. "Oh, same."

Bruce stretched out his free hand to take hers, and squeezed. Selina squeezed back.


End file.
